The Stochastic Man

  “Are you really all right?”

  “Perfectly.”

  “I’m sorry I asked you to—”

  “Don’t worry about it,” he said. “It wasn’t as bad as it must have looked to you.”

  “Was it frightening, the thing you saw?”

  “Frightening? No, no, not frightening. I told you, it was nothing I haven’t seen before. I’ll tell you about it one of these days.” He summoned the waiter. “I think it’s time to have lunch,” he said.

  My menu bore no prices, a sign of class. The list of offerings was incredible: baked salmon steak, Maine lobster, roast sirloin, filet of sole, a whole roster of unobtainables, none of your dreary latter-day soybean clevernesses and seaweed confections. Any first-class New York restaurant might be serving one kind of fresh fish and one sort of meat, but to find nine or ten rarities on the same menu was overwhelming testimony to the power and wealth of the Merchants and Shippers Club’s membership and the high connections of its chef. It would hardly have been more amazing to find the menu listing filet of unicorn and broiled sphinx chop. Having no idea what anything cost, I ordered blithely, cherrystone clams and the sirloin. Carvajal opted for shrimp cocktail and the salmon. He declined wine but urged me to get a half bottle for myself. The wine list likewise was priceless; I picked a ‘91 Latour, probably twenty-five bucks. No sense being stingy on Carvajal’s behalf. I was his guest and he could afford it.

  Carvajal was watching me closely. He was more of a puzzle than ever. Certainly he wanted something from me; certainly he had some use for me. He seemed almost to be courting me, in his remote, inarticulate, secretive way. But he was giving no hints. I felt like a man playing poker blindfolded against an opponent who could see my hand.

  The demonstration of seeing that I had extracted from him had been so disturbing a punctuation of our conversation that I hesitated to return to the subject, and for a time we talked aimlessly and amiably about wine, food, the stock market, the national economy, politics, and similar neutral themes. Unavoidably we came around to the topic of Paul Quinn, and the air seemed to grow perceptibly heavier.

  He said, “Quinn’s doing a good job, isn’t he?”

  “I think so.”

  “He must be the city’s most popular mayor in decades. He does have charm, eh? And tremendous energy. Too much, sometimes, yes? He often seems impatient, unwilling to go through the usual political channels to get things done.”

  “I suppose,” I said. “He’s impetuous, sure. A fault of youth. He isn’t even forty years old, remember.”

  “He should go easier. There are times when his impatience makes him high-handed. Mayor Gottfried was high-handed, and you recall what happened to him.”

  “Gottfried was an out-and-out dictator. He tried to turn New York City into a police state and—” I halted, dismayed. “Wait a second. Are you hinting that Quinn’s in real danger of assassination?”

  “Not really. No more than any other major political figure.”

  “Have you seen anything that—”

  “No. Nothing.”

  “I have to know. If you’re in possession of any sort of data concerning an attempt on the mayor’s life, don’t play games with it. I want to hear about it.”

  Carvajal looked amused. “You misunderstand. Quinn’s in no personal danger that I’m aware of, and I chose my words badly if I implied that he is. What I meant is that Gottfried’s tactics were gaining enemies for him. If he hadn’t been murdered he might, just might, have begun running into problems getting re-elected. Quinn’s making enemies lately, too. As he bypasses the City Council more and more, he’s upsetting certain blocs of voters.”

  “The blacks, yes, but—”

  “Not only the blacks. The Jews in particular are getting unhappy about him.”

  “I wasn’t aware of that. The polls don’t—”

  “Not yet, no. But it’ll begin to surface in a few months. His stand on that religious-instruction business in the schools, for example, has apparently already hurt him in the Jewish neighborhoods. And his comments about Israel at the dedication of the new Bank of Kuwait Tower on Lexington Avenue—”

  “That dedication doesn’t take place for another three weeks,” I pointed out

  Carvajal laughed. “It doesn’t? Oh, I’ve mixed up again, haven’t I! I did see his speech on television, I thought, but perhaps—”

  “You didn’t see it. You saw it.”

  “No doubt No doubt.”

  “What is he going to say about Israel?”

  “Just a few light quips. But the Jewish people here are extremely sensitive to such remarks, and the reaction wasn’t—isn’t going to be—good. New York’s Jews, you know, traditionally mistrust Irish politicians. Especially Irish mayors, but they weren’t even all that fond of the Kennedys before the assassinations.”

  “Quinn’s no more of an Irishman than you are a Spaniard,” I said.

  “To a Jew anybody named Quinn is an Irishman, and his descendants unto the fiftieth generation will be Irishmen, and I’m a Spaniard. They don’t like Quinn’s aggressiveness. Soon they’ll start to think he doesn’t have the right ideas about Israel. And they’ll be grumbling out loud.”

  “When?”

  “By autumn. The Times will do a front-page feature on the alienation of the Jewish electorate.”

  “No,” I said. “I’ll send Lombroso to do the Kuwait dedication in Quinn’s place. That’ll shut Quinn up and also remind everybody that we’ve got a Jew right at the highest level of the municipal administration.”

  “Oh, no, you can’t do that,” said Carvajal.

  “Why not?”

  “Because Quinn is going to speak. I saw him there.”

  “What if I arrange to have Quinn go to Alaska that week?”

  “Please, Lew. Believe me, it’s impossible for Quinn to be anywhere but at the Kuwait Bank Building on the day of the dedication. Impossible.”

  “And impossible, too, I guess, for him to avoid making wisecracks about Israel, even if he’s warned not to do it?”

  “Yes.”

  “I don’t believe this. I think if I go to him tomorrow and say, Hey, Paul, my reading is the Jewish voters are getting restless, so maybe skip the Kuwait thing, he’ll skip it. Or else tone down his remarks.”

  “He’ll go,” said Carvajal quietly.

  “No matter what I say or do?”

  “No matter what you say or do, Lew.”

  I shook my head. “The future isn’t as inflexible as you think. We do have some say about events yet to come. I’ll talk to Quinn about the Kuwait ceremony.”

  “Please don’t.”

  “Why not?” I asked roughly. “Because you have some need to make the future turn out the right way?”

  He seemed wounded by that. Gently he said, “Because I know the future always does turn out the right way. Do you insist on testing that?”

  “Quinn’s interests are my interests. If you’ve seen him do something damaging to those interests, how can I sit still and let him go ahead and do it?”

  ‘‘There’s no choice.”

  “I don’t know that yet.”

  Carvajal sighed. “If you raise the matter of the Kuwait ceremony with the mayor,” he said ponderously, “you will have had your last access to the things I see.”

  “Is that a threat?”

  “A statement of feet.”

  “A statement that tends to make your prophency self-fulfilling. You know I want your help, so you seal my lips with your threat, so of course the ceremony comes off the way you saw it. But what’s the good of your telling me things if I’m not allowed to act on them? Why don’t you risk giving me free rein? Are you so unsure of the strength of your visions that you have to take this way of guaranteeing that they’ll come out right?”

  “Very well,” Carvajal said mildly, without malice. “You have free rein. Do as you please. We’ll see what happens.”

  “And if I speak to Quinn, will that mean a break betwee
n you and me?”

  “We’ll see what happens,” he said.

  He had me. Once again he had outplayed me; for how did I dare risk losing access to his vision, and how could I predict what his reaction to my treachery would be? I would have to let Quinn alienate the Jews next month, and hope to repair the damage later, unless I could find some way around Carvajal’s insistence on silence. Maybe I ought to discuss this with Lombroso.

  I said, “How badly disenchanted are the Jews going to be with him?”

  “Enough to cost him a lot of votes. He’s planning to run for re-election in ‘01, isn’t he?”

  “If he isn’t elected President next year.”

  “He won’t be,” Carvajal said. “We both know that. He won’t even run. But he’ll need to be re-elected mayor in 2001 if he wants to try for the White House three years later.”

  “Definitely.”

  “Then he ought not to alienate the New York City Jewish vote. That’s all I can tell you.”

  I made a mental note to advise Quinn to start repairing his ties with the city’s Jews—visit some kosher delicatessens, drop in at a few synagogues on Friday night.

  “Are you angry with me for what I said a little while back?” I asked.

  “I never get angry,” Carvajal said.

  “Hurt, then. You looked hurt when I said you need to make the future turn out the right way.”

  “I suppose I was. Because it shows how little you’ve understood me, Lew. As if you really do think I’m under some neurotic compulsion to fulfill my own visions. As if you think I’d use psychological blackmail to keep you from upsetting the patterns. No, Lew. The patterns can’t be upset, and until you accept that, there can’t be any real kinship of thought between us, no sharing of vision. What you said saddened me because it revealed to me how far away from me you really are. But no, no, I’m not angry with you. Is it a good steak?”

  “Magnificent,” I told him, and he smiled.

  We finished the meal in virtual silence and left without waiting for the check. The club would bill him, I supposed. The tab must have run well over a hundred fifty dollars.

  Outside, as we parted, Carvajal said, “Someday, when you see things yourself, you’ll understand why Quinn has to say what I know he’s going to say at the Kuwait Bank dedication.”

  “When I see things myself?”

  “You will.”

  “I don’t have the gift.”

  “Everyone has the gift,” he said. “Very few know how to use it.” He gave my forearm a quick squeeze and disappeared into the crowd on Wall Street.

  20

  I didn’t put through an immediate call to Quinn, but I came close to it. As soon as Carvajal was out of sight I found myself wondering why I should hesitate. Carvajal’s insights into things to come were demonstrably accurate; he had given me information important to Quinn’s career; my responsibility to Quinn overrode all other considerations. Besides, Carvajal’s concept of an inflexible, unchangeable future still seemed an absurdity to me. Anything that hadn’t happened yet had to be subject to change; I could change it and I would, for Quinn’s sake.

  But I didn’t put through the call.

  Carvajal had asked me—ordered me, threatened me, warned me—not to intervene in this thing. If Quinn failed to keep his date with the Kuwaitis, Carvajal would know why, and that might be the end of my fragile, tantalizing relationship with the strangely potent little man. But could Quinn skip the Kuwait dedication, even if I intervened? According to Carvajal, that was impossible. On the other hand, perhaps Carvajal was playing games within games, and what he really foresaw was a future in which Quinn didn’t attend the Kuwait function. In that case the script might call for me to be the agent of change, the one who prevented Quinn from keeping his date, and then Carvajal would be counting on me to be just contrary enough to help things work out the right way. That didn’t sound very plausible, but I had to take the possibility into account. I was lost in a maze of blind alleys. My sense of stochasticity would not hold. I no longer knew what I believed about the future or even the present, and the past itself was starting to look uncertain. I think that luncheon with Carvajal began the process of stripping me of what I once regarded as sanity.

  I pondered for a couple of days. Then I went to Bob Lombroso’s celebrated office and dumped the whole business on him.

  “I have a problem of political tactics,” I said.

  “Why come to me instead of Haig Mardikian? He’s the strategist.”

  “Because my problem involves concealing confidential information about Quinn. I know something that Quinn might want to know, and I’m not able to tell him. Mardikian’s such a gung-ho Quinn man that he’s likely to get the story out of me under a pledge of secrecy and then head straight to Quinn with it.”

  “I’m a gung-ho Quinn man, too,” Lombroso said. “You’re a gung-ho Quinn man.”

  “Yes,” I said. “But you’re not so gung-ho that you’d breach a friend’s confidence for Quinn’s sake.”

  “Whereas you think Haig would?”

  “He might.”

  “Haig would be upset if he knew you felt like that about him.”

  “I know you aren’t going to report any of this to him,” I said. “I know you aren’t.”

  Lombroso made no reply, merely stood there against the magnificent backdrop of his collection of medieval treasures, digging his fingers deep into his dense black beard and studying me with those piercing eyes. There was a long worrisome silence. Yet I felt I had been right in coming to him rather than to Mardikian. Of the entire Quinn team Lombroso was the most reasonable, the most reliable, a splendidly sane, well-balanced man, centered and incorruptible, wholly independent of mind. If my judgment of him were wrong, I would be finished.

  I said eventually, “Is it a deal? You won’t repeat anything I tell you today?”

  “Depends.”

  “On what?”

  “On whether I agree with you that it’s best to conceal the thing you want concealed.”

  “I tell you, and then you decide?”

  “Yes.”

  “I can’t do that, Bob.”

  “That means you don’t trust me either, right?”

  I considered for a moment. Intuition said go ahead, tell him everything. Caution said there was at least a chance he might override me and take the story to Quinn.

  “All right,” I said “I’ll tell you the story. I hope that whatever I say remains between you and me.”

  “Go ahead,” Lombroso said.

  I took a deep breath. “I had lunch with Carvajal a few days ago. He told me that Quinn is going to make some wisecracks about Israel when he speaks at the Bank of Kuwait dedication early next month, and that the wisecracks are going to offend a lot of Jewish voters here, aggravating local Jewish disaffection with Quinn that I didn’t know exists, but which Carvajal says is already severe and likely to get much worse.”

  Lombroso stared. “Are you out of your mind, Lew?”

  “I might be. Why?”

  “You really do believe that Carvajal can see the future?”

  “He plays the stock market as though he can read next month’s newspapers, Bob. He tipped us about Leydecker dying and Socorro taking over. He told us about Gilmartin. He—”

  “Oil gellation, too, yes. So he guesses well; I think we’ve already had this conversation at least once, Lew.”

  “He doesn’t guess. I guess. He sees.”

  Lombroso contemplated me. He was trying to look patient and tolerant, but he seemed troubled. He is above all else a man of reason; and I was talking madness to him. “You think he can predict the content of an off-the- cuff speech that isn’t due to be delivered for three weeks?”

  “I do.”

  “How is such a thing possible?”

  I thought of Carvajal’s tablecloth diagram, of the two streams of time flowing in opposite directions. I couldn’t try to sell that to Lombroso. I said, “I don’t know. I don’t know at all
. I take it on faith. He’s shown me enough evidence so that I’m convinced he can do it, Bob.”

  Lombroso looked unconvinced.

  “This is the first I’ve heard that Quinn is in trouble with the Jewish voters,” he said. “Where’s the evidence for that? What do your polls show?”

  “Nothing. Not yet.”

  “Not yet? When does it start to turn up?”

  “In a few months, Bob. Carvajal says the Times will run a feature this fall on the way Quinn is losing Jewish support.”

  “Don’t you think I’d know it pretty quickly if Quinn were getting in trouble with the Jews, Lew? But from everything I hear, he’s the most popular mayor with them since Beame, maybe since LaGuardia.”

  “You’re a millionaire. So are your friends,” I told him. “You can’t get a representative sampling of popular opinion hanging out with millionaires. You aren’t even a representative Jew, Bob. You said so yourself: you’re a Sephardic, you’re Latin, and Sephardim are an elite, a minority, an aristocratic little caste that has very little in common with Mrs. Goldstein and Mr. Rosenblum. Quinn might be losing the support of a hundred Rosenblums a day and the news wouldn’t reach your crowd of Spinozas and Cardozos until they read about it in the Times. Am I right?”

  Shrugging, Lombroso said, “I’ll admit there’s some truth in that. But we’re getting off the track, aren’t we? What’s your actual problem, Lew?”

  “I want to warn Quinn not to make that Kuwait speech, or else to lay off the wisecracks. Carvajal won’t let me say a word to him.”

  “Won’t let you?”

  “He says the speech is destined to occur as he perceived it, and he insists I simply let it take place. If I do anything to prevent Quinn from doing what the script calls for for that day, Carvajal threatens to sever relations with me.”